Looking Back On Looking Forward

Mike was asking me whether I spent a lot of time planning a future when I was his age and I thought about it and said, "No, not really."

I remember- thirty years ago- discussing career plans with the smoothie in the next door parish and being shocked to discover he had his life all mapped out ahead of him. He reckoned he wasn't sufficiently well connected to get a bishopric so he was going to settle for an archdeaconry- and in order to get his archdeaconry he meant to make himself visible in all the appropriate places and get into the good graces of all the right people. "How Godless," I thought (because I was always a prig) and also, "How silly!"